What's Left in North Dakota

Main menu

Monthly Archives: August 2015

Jack Dalrymple is out, and suddenly everyone is falling in to run for Governor.

I’ll say personally that my dream candidate is Aneta farmer and former State Representative Ben Vig. He’d be the next Governor Guy in a lot of ways. There’s Jasper Schneider and a lot of good Leaguers who could put up a heck of a fight. But of course, all eyes are on Heidi Heitkamp.

Heidi’s advantage is that she can run for Governor without losing her seat in the Senate. The complication is that if she wins, we immediately get a special election Senate campaign. So to even make this option feasible and responsible, Heidi needs to fundraise for two campaigns back-to-back. And then who’s running for the Senate seat?

But Heidi doesn’t have to run herself to get a great candidate with charisma, good name recognition, and mass appeal. Her brother Joel Heitkamp has been in the Legislature and runs a popular radio show that airs statewide.

Joel isn’t home free, of course; he’s going to lose that microphone in a hurry if he gets in the race, but it’s not the same as losing a Senate seat, and it’s highly likely that KFGO would put leftish Mike McFeely in the morning to keep listeners’ blood boiling. I’ll call it a win-win.

Campaign season has been on in Canada for three weeks, with a fixed election date in October. The usual 34 days or so is instead a marathon 80+ day affair, which seems like nothing compared to the 24/7/365 of American politics, but is unprecedented in modern Canada.

Conservative leader Stephen Harper’s strategy appears to be damage control. Scandals that are plaguing his party are wont to be forgotten over the long campaign season, and the Tory advantage with fundraising makes them far better equipped to weather a long-duration campaign.

As early polls have shown the New Democratic Party to be the favourite to replace the Conservative government, Thomas Mulcair’s impact has been muted, surfacing at appropriate moments to snipe at the embattled Harper record, but shying from the limelight. By contrast, Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party have hit the trail with a similar sort of energy that Jack Layton had when the NDP was a third-place party.

Atlantic

The NDP trails the Grits 44 to 35% (at 20% the Conservatives are not a huge factor). There is the occasional loud independent candidate in Newfoundland, but the leaders have mainly been visiting Nova Scotia.

No more than a sixth of voters have given the Conservative Party their support in recent polls, making la Belle Province mainly a battleground for the left. At the moment, les Liberaux are taking a nosedive, and the comeback envisioned by the Bloc Québecois has stalled as sovereignty is polling at just 37%. Voters appear to be accepting the NDP as the most credible voice of social-democratic policy, and therefore, the likely winner in the vast majority of Québec.

Ontario

Seat-rich Ontario is a three-way race. Ontario is huge and has unique constituencies, but by and large this is a fight in the Toronto suburbs, with the Conservatives nominally polling just ahead of the NDP and Liberals, 32-31-30%.

Prairies

The Conservatives have a hefty lead, but the region is not particularly seat-rich. Out of the gate, there was significant interest in the race in Alberta, following on the heels of a surprise NDP win in the provincial arena. However, the most recent polling shows that the Tories are gaining support on their home turf.

The wildcard in the race is the Green Party, and nowhere in Canada is that more of a factor than British Columbia. The party has enough support on Vancouver Island and the southern Mainland. Party leader Elizabeth May claims that the bulk of their supporters would otherwise not participate in the election at all, but supposing that Green supporters still voted, just not for Greens and with a 50-50 split between the NDP and Liberals, there’d be at least 3 fewer seats for the Conservatives.

National Outlook

At the moment, the analysis suggests an NDP minority government. With so much time left in the campaign, there are still many twists and turns to come. There is some thought that the Conservatives are under-reported in polling in recent years; the current majority government was a surprise, looking solely at pre-election polls it was about 30 seats ahead of where everyone thought the Tories were.

Probably the most difficult scenario would be the Tories holding on to a nominal seat lead, perhaps 130, followed closely by the NDP and Liberals. Would Harper place his brand on compromise legislation to retain the role of PM, or would the left cooperate and force him out, despite their softer mandate?